Dear Quentin, My mother passed away three months ago after a long and horrible decline due to dementia. This devastated me and my immediate family. I also had to leave my job during this time. My mother passed away less than a month after being moved to a memory-care unit, and I am still in the depths of grief. Her sisters and their children came to the funeral.
My extended family felt entitled to look through my mother’s paintings, her purses, her jewelry and everything else. One cousin even took one of my mother’s designer purses to give to her sister (who did not come to the funeral) because the cousin felt bad about not sharing the inheritance she got from her grandmother with her sister (another long story). If I said anything about how tasteless this was or how it was hurting me, they brushed me off as greedy and overly sensitive. One of my aunts currently has eight paintings from my mother’s house hanging in her house, if this gives you an idea of the extent of things. I have worked to accept and get over it. However, recently things have really escalated. My father has money. I do not. I live paycheck to paycheck due to the high cost o …